not me. i love windows products in general, and use media center in my living room and all. but itunes rocks. but it's all about accepting to adapt to it. if you want to make it work your way that is different from it, it will fail (as about any software does). but if you adapt to it, it's great.

now, i haven't got the sync setup yet, and i'm curious about it. this would be the last step to perfection for me.

davepermen wrote:itunes rocks. but it's all about accepting to adapt to it.

i totally disagree, that is exactly the point, you need to understand iTunes first and discover how deep the rabbit hole is. and then you can make it behaving your way... (of course within certain limits like in any other software... as you said)

still the way you can customise it and what you can do with it in general is totally crazy for it just being 'a player'

i used to hate it like hell, now i made it behaving 'my way' and i totally and utterly love it, it is the most powerful player around, once you understand it.

it is a shame that it does have a totally crap manual and super stupid default settings that does not make it easy to get into iTunes at all, i totally admit.

what i mean is, i see people "it sucks, it's not like winamp, or not like.. what ever". and i say, well, duh? osx is not like windows, linux isn't as well. win7 not like vista, which isn't like xp. openoffice not like office. office 2010 not like 2007.

that's what different products ARE FOR. for trying out if that other one fits better.

one thing that i find important: moving to itunes should at the same time mean completely dropping the ideology to manage your data yourself in your folders and all (but still doable).

i set it up so tracks dropped in to itunes get copied into it's database-file-structure, and it manages all itself. the result: a 100% cleaned up, ordered music library, that now allows great flexibility in usage, filtering, etc (and into traktor, etc).

one can sure tweak it very much, but the trick is to try the features it has, explore the way it's ment to be.

For me Itunes is by far the best database front end for managing mp3s that Ive found. Your tags have to be perfect, but if they are, then the ability to bring up every song with the word 'shoe' in it, from between 1972 and 1986 within seconds is awesome.

I dont let Itunes manage the library on my main machine as I do not like some of its non standard tag handling, and naming conventions. On my media box I do let it manage the library, as I never do any ripping on that box, and its contents never go to backup.

The new 'Automatically add to Itunes' folder in V9 is a great addition for managed libraries.

If you dont use it to manage your library, you can still use whatever folder structure you like, and use Itunes Folder Watch, to import on the PC.

adventurepants_ wrote:For me Itunes is by far the best database front end for managing mp3s that Ive found. Your tags have to be perfect, but if they are, then the ability to bring up every song with the word 'shoe' in it, from between 1972 and 1986 within seconds is awesome.

I dont let Itunes manage the library on my main machine as I do not like some of its non standard tag handling, and naming conventions. On my media box I do let it manage the library, as I never do any ripping on that box, and its contents never go to backup.

The new 'Automatically add to Itunes' folder in V9 is a great addition for managed libraries.

If you dont use it to manage your library, you can still use whatever folder structure you like, and use Itunes Folder Watch, to import on the PC.

tried the sync over different machines now, which got suggested, itunes should be able to. but while i can share, there is no way to really sync except by doing manually.

this software sounds perfect my homeserver scans all itunes folders it finds, and copies all music out of it onto \\server\music. with this tool, all tracks could then get auto-distributed to the individual libraries.

or can anyone tell me if, and how, autosynching could else be set up with at least 3 machines?

btw, i like that now with win7, m4a are native understood by windows. so you can use itunes to manage it all, and then have f.e. media center grab your music library, showing all the cover art, playing back all the tracks. all working together very nicely.

i think this is one of the first times in my life i could actually make a joke about a mac being worse than a pc and it was for some reason true (so far it was more about them being equal good or bad in my case)..

but i'd wish it wasn't true. hope it's soon rockstable for everyone. it's a great app when it works... :s

still on the itunes sync. i start to consider just copying the whole itunes folder (automatically, with a synctool) around to server, back onto the laptop/pc. because normally, i won't ever change the lib on both systems anyways, and all stuff of importance is stored in the iTunes folder anyways, right?

Most infuriating POS ever. It is physically impossible to access the hardware (portable hard drive - not magic, lots of people make them) without installing their sluggish crap software iTunes, and it will not install until it is given permission to phone home via the internet! I mean, wtf, I bought the stupid mp3 playing hard drive, and I can't even use the stupid thing until I help Apple with their marketing. Ok, fine, so I open the firewall, and let their crap call home, and then I can install their crap software - but what is this? It's converting my file formats into some fuckin' Apple thing? Without me asking it to? Who the fuck do they think they are, doing that? Fucking retarded! And unless I tie my computer up for hours and hours changing my mp3 audio books into your bullshit audiobook proprietary format, then they get all mixed up with music when in shuffle, total failure in the usability department. Your slow buggy software sucks, your hard to kill spyware sucks, your condescending dumbing down sucks, your unsolicited file conversions suck, your refusal to be what you are - a portable hard drive that should allow me to create folders and use drag and drop - sucks, in short - you are all style and no substance, exactly what I have come to expect from a company I used to respect. I can't wait for their shit hardware to die, or the unreplaceable batteries, so I can get a real player. Last Apple product for me ever. Colossal fail.